8 ms·
Too late. HR has been moving to make us to stop using: blacklist, whitelist, sanity check, and master. It's a frighteningly difficult exercise in doublethink t
by Igelau 6y ago
Too late. HR has been moving to make us to stop using: blacklist, whitelist, sanity check, and master. It's a frighteningly difficult exercise in doublethink to take a required security course (produced by a third party) that refers to blacklist and whitelist and then having to self censor your own peer discussions about it.
- bitdizzy 6y agoHow do you define doublethink?
- Uhhrrr 6y agoThey probably meant "crimestop".
- Igelau 6y agoI understand it's not a very common one and can be kind of confusing. Here's a pretty good definition: "the acceptance of or mental capacity to accept contrary opinions or beliefs at the same time" In this case, the conflicting belief that these words are okay in the course you are taking, but that these words are not okay if you are discussing the course material.
- bitdizzy 6y agoThey can be not ok and you just deal with it. The presence of conflict and cognitive dissonance isnt doublethink. Most of Orwell is misunderstood in an aesthetic or superficial way unfortunately.
- pbreit 6y agoMoving away from blacklist/whitelist seems reasonable to me.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoI think it's the least clever idea since Person Potato Head.
- tenpies 6y agoExcuse me but "person" contains "son" in it which is indicative of gendered childhood, and heteronormative reproduction. This is highly problematic for children and adults who identify as children who may be struggling with their gender identity; as well as those who chose to reproduce through non-sexual or non-heterosexual mechanisms. Please refer to them as per-offspring potato heads instead.
- marshmallow_12 6y agoComing up next: post per-offspring Pat and his neither Black nor White cat, Jess who may or may not marry a dog.
- ClumsyPilot 6y agoAgreed, I don't see how using 'blocklist' is too much to ask, it means exactly what it says
- monkeywork 6y agowhy? the terms do not have racial histories to them.
- katbyte 6y agoentire paper on the subject here https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6148600/
- negzero7 6y agoThis paper just repeatedly says these are racist words. There is nothing historically they write about that indicates this is true.
- hanklazard 6y agoI personally like using “blocklist” instead of “blacklist” but that paper is pretty terrible. It seems more like an opinion piece with a bunch of references to give it authority. Here’s a critical piece of the “evidence” presented: “In this context, it is worth examining the origins of the term “blacklist” from the Douglas Harper Etymology Dictionary, which states that its origin and history is: n. also black-list, black list, “list of persons who have incurred suspicion,” 1610s, from black (adj.), here indicative of disgrace, censure, punishment (attested from 1590s, in black book) + list (n.). Specifically of employers’ list of workers considered troublesome (usually for union activity) is from 1888. As a verb, from 1718. Related: Blacklisted; blacklisting. [32] It is notable that the first recorded use of the term occurs at the time of mass enslavement and forced deportation of Africans to work in European-held colonies in the Americas.” Seriously? We clearly need to rethink the whole academic publishing process.
- dcolkitt 6y agoThe etymology of the word has nothing to do with race.[1] There are many uses in the English language where colors are used as descriptors in ways that have nothing to do with race. Do you think we should ban the terms blackout, blackbody radiation, black holes, black ice, black ops, and black markets? Not everything is about race. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting
- Sebb767 6y ago> > black market https://www.huffpost.com/entry/common-words-phrases-racist-origins-connotations_l_5efcfb63c5b6ca9709188c83 https://www.huffpost.com/entry/common-words-phrases-racist-o... : > The symbolism of white as positive and black as negative is pervasive in our culture. Watts-Jones has highlighted many terms with negative meanings that reference blackness. In the English language, she wrote in 2004, color is “related to extortion (blackmail), disrepute (black mark), rejection (blackball), banishment (blacklist), impurity (‘not the driven snow’) and illicitness (black market).” > > black ops https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101110054644AATnCRz&guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly9kdWNrZHVja2dvLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIIC1c2tvYDOyE5Ap2rlwELU2Z9AIFgN5u70BQln-BpjN64O9kO5c2KKBodJMBACpzMHJ9D90fA1XxzVkG4NtrO0RFnhb2VOpRnuQSYtkCtV1RTS2O5QM2qiq91zZXtMEkBAxjykNv3MZ3F-tzlEd1XbuwVRI4PoKXOxdmiip1Qs https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20101110054644A... : > Consequently, it becomes apparent that 'Call of Duty: Black Ops' really means - Call to Arms against the Black People You thought you were joking, weren't you? The latter link might be sarcasm, but at this point, it's actually hard to tell.
- rayiner 6y agoHow? There is no racial connotation—black and white had those associations in European culture long before contact with Africa: https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/light-and-dark-2.html https://www.grammarphobia.com/blog/2009/12/light-and-dark-2.... > In Old English, the adjective could mean “very evil or wicked; iniquitous; foul, hateful,” according to the dictionary. The earliest Oxford citation is from a scientific and theological treatise written by a Benedictine cleric in the late 10th century. Not only that, but those colors have similar associations all over the world, for example in India and Japan. It has to do with nighttime/darkness having foreboding/negative implications. > Berne notes that the ideas of light=goodness and dark=badness existed in ancient cultures (including Egyptian and Greek), and can be found in Asia and around the globe. > Joseph Campbell, writing in the journal Daedalus in 1959, says it was the Persian philosopher Zoroaster (circa 600 BC) who put the seal on the concept of darkness being evil.
- jjeaff 6y agoYes, black vs white is a very old concept. Why do you think europeans started referring to people from africa as black and themselves as white, when they are really more like pink and brown?
- nearbuy 6y agoEver notice that purple foods tend to be called either red or blue (or sometimes black if they're dark purple)? Like red cabbage, red onions, red grapes, blue potatoes[1]. Or for that matter how white grapes are green and black walnuts are brown? How black eyes are usually purple? English just seems to have a strong preference towards approximating everything with the most basic colors. Europeans also called native Americans red and Asians yellow, and it probably wasn't because they associated those colors with evil. All people are shades of brown. White people can be pinkish, but are usually light brown or reddish light brown. When you look at this white man's [2] skin color next to the light brown wood he's working with, he's clearly a darker brown than the wood. But I imagine Europeans didn't want to label races as light brown, medium brown and dark brown. [1] https://www.almanac.com/sites/default/files/image_nodes/all_blue_organic_potatoes.jpg https://www.almanac.com/sites/default/files/image_nodes/all_... [2] https://c.stocksy.com/a/0m5500/z9/1213836.jpg https://c.stocksy.com/a/0m5500/z9/1213836.jpg
- dehrmann 6y agoThis is interesting. I plugged them into Google ngram viewer. Whitelist was almost unused until 2000. Blacklist came into use right after the Reconstruction era (may or may not mean anything), but it has two peaks in use: WWI and WWII. I was expecting McCarthyism, but it wasn't as popular as during major wars.
- HideousKojima 6y agoBlacklists's first known usage in English comes from England in the 1600's, specifically referring to a list of people who were involved in the execution of Charles I. Its origin literally has nothing to do with race.
- pbreit 6y agoHow about "blocklist" and "allowlist"?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- flipcoder 6y agoWhen all you've got is a hammer and sickle, every problem looks like systemic oppression.
- rudedogg 6y ago> master Like three times I've had to figure out what is wrong with my git repo because Xcode switched the default branch from 'master' -> 'main'. Tutorials everywhere no longer work, etc. We've managed to add even more pointless but required knowledge to programming. Ironically it's the newbies who suffer the most. ------------ A few days ago in the AsciiDoc mailing list – there was an effort to try to find a new word for "whitespace" (obviously the "white" comes from paper, how you even think of race in this context baffles me).
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hedora 6y ago“green list and red list” Clearly, you love environmentalists, but hate commies. Try again. You can call it “gray space” now that everything is low contrast gray on gray. (Black on white and white on black were apparently also offensive color schemes.)
- Master_Odin 6y agoThe AsciiDoc example is an interesting one as I've not seen really any discussion about "whitespace" as offensive and cannot really find anything. Add onto the fact that stuff like wikipedia also still refers to it as whitespace as so it does seem like they're going to define their own term for AsciiDoc that'll be at odds with broader community and just begs for newbie confusion.
- Glide 6y agoWe had a politician say "amen and awomen” not too long ago. And he’s ordained in some fashion. We all want off this crazy ride.
- ncallaway 6y agoIt was a joke. It's so weird for me to see people complaining about hypersensitivity get so up in arms about a pun. I just find it so hilariously hypocritical for the crowds that constantly complain about the over-policing of speech to find a light-hearted pun to be so dastardly offensive. To each their own I guess, but a simple pun doesn't feel like the biggest threat we face...
- BLKNSLVR 6y agoWhat's a terminology to replace 'master' in the case of a 'master list'. I've used 'primary' and 'main', but they both imply the existence of a secondary or other acceptable replacement, which is rarely the case. "Single source of truth" is too cumbersome and often the incorrect context. 'Prime' looks like the best candidate going by synonyms. 'Authoritative' has too many syllables, although gets the point across. Blacklist and whitelist, when looking at the etymology these terms are obviously problematic, and I happily use block/ban list and allow list. Easy. Even "Green list" and "Red list" would work fine, traffic lights won't mind. Sanity check, never thought about that one. "Sense check" may have similar connotations, but the word sense, itself, has multiple meanings, so that's got a backdoor. Congruity check? I don't want to have to explain the word every time I ask for someone to "congruity check" a set of data.
- pseudalopex 6y agoMaster list implies secondary lists too. Plausibility check is a good replacement for sanity check. Or something like quick check to communicate it isn't extensive.
- rudedogg 6y ago> Blacklist and whitelist, when looking at the etymology these terms are obviously problematic Am I missing something? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the_term https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blacklisting#Origins_of_the_te...
- zepto 6y ago“Single source of truth“ Isn’t that a little Bigoted?
- zepto 6y agoSorry - should have put a /s - that was meant to be a joke.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- thrownaway564 6y agoMy company has a list of over 80 banned and 'discouraged' words without listing obvious slurs "wife" is one of the new ones. Not inclusive
- twothamendment 6y agoWife? I guess you'll all have to start using "the ball and chain".
- Clewza313 6y agoThe Cockney version is "trouble and strife". Just wait until they find out what a Berkshire hunt is though.
- malandrew 6y ago> master The wild thing about the term "master" and the people that want to censor it is how English-language centric it is. It really only has the sensitive connotations it has in English. In Italian for example, maestro is teacher. My fear is that what today is "we should move away from that term" will in a few short years become "we can't hire them because they typed 'git checkout master' in their live coding interview" and at that point it discriminates against those for whom English is their second language. This happened to a friend of mine with the word "lynch". In English it is a highly racializes term but in his native tongue, Portuguese, the connotation largely revolves around mob violence committed against rapists and adulterers (just go search for the verb "linchar" and you'll find youtube videos of mob violence against people suspected of rape and adultery). Well he used that term in a discussion on github back when discussing the changes to a popular open source project's code of conduct about 7-8 years ago and a bunch of cancel culture folks jumped on him and it culminated in them trying to get him fired from his current job. He was lucky that it was long enough ago that his boss brushed it off, but in today's environment he's certain he would have lost his job over using a term in his native tongue that is fully divorced from how people feel about the word in English.
- mikaeluman 6y agoExactly. In German it’s meister and in Swedish mästare. It has absolutely nothing to do with slavery. Sorry if this offends someone but I think a lot of these newly verboten words nonsense stems from poor education and ignorance in the US.
- geebee 6y agoHow will we refer to a common graduate degree between bachelor and doctorate?
- helloworld11 6y agoYour point really underscored how idiotically narrow minded and self absorbed these inquisition-like crusades against racial offense sometimes are. The people conducting them in the English-speaking western world seem to not even realize that their entire framing of "inclusiveness" is based on an amusingly simplistic and even unconsciously hypocritical presumption of all linguistic connotations being beholden to English definitions of things. Especially amusing to see this coming from people who otherwise fixate to an insane degree on signalling their embrace for non-western, non-"privileged" cultural values. Another common example related to yours: in countries with latin languages like spanish or Portuguese, the word for both the color black and black people in a completely generic non-racist way is negro. It literally just means black. A Spanish speaker having said it in the wrong context in an english language setting could easily invite criticism born of the silliness I mentioned above.